Fair is fair, right?

The beauty of asymmetrical games is that they aren’t equal. Asymmetry lets players have different sets of options, and this has a wide number of positive side effects. Players are more likely to find a character, class or faction that feels good to them, so they’ll play and enjoy it more. It opens up strategic space in the game, allowing for more depth, more exploration, and more experiences, so the game stays fresh for longer. Tired of playing a specific faction? Play a new one; it’s like a whole different game.

The problem biggest problem – and honestly, maybe the only problem – with asymmetrical games is that they’re prone to imbalance. Symmetrical games don’t get off scot-free from this one – a dominant strategy can easily exist in a symmetrical game. In a symmetrical game, though, the matchup is always 5-5, meaning that if two players of equal skill play 10 games, each is expected to win 5. Makes sense, if everything is equal.

The beauty of asymmetrical games is that they aren’t equal, though. Hell, it’s the first thing I said! While two players playing the same character (it could also be faction/class/deck or whatever, but I’m just using character from now on outside of specific examples) is still 5-5, those are the only truly even matchups that exist. Everything else is slanted one way or the other.  The advantage one character has might be so small as to be imperceptible, or it might be so huge you can’t ignore it.

In Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (Super Turbo for short), there’s a character called E. Honda. A cornerstone of his play is a move where he launches himself forward like a rocket. While doing this move you can’t hurt him by hitting him in the head, you have to hit his torso. Hitting his head will hurt you, though, so if you try to punch or kick him out of it, there’s two basic possibilities: either you hit each other, or you don’t hit E. Honda (you only clipped his head) but he hits you. The “fat man rocket” is a really good move because it beats or trades with everything, right?

Haha, wrong. A lot of characters in Super Turbo have fireballs – projectiles of some sort that they throw in front of themselves. Your fireball is not part of your person, so if it gets punched you don’t get hurt, but the opponent does because seriously, who would try to punch a fireball? If E. Honda fat man rockets and you throw a fireball at him, the fireball will hit him and stop him before he hits you. Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with one player’s option beating another player’s option – basically everything in any game can get beaten by something else – but this is the cornerstone of E. Honda’s plan. It’s like, the most important thing he can do. Half the cast can throw fireballs at him – he has a lot of 3-7 matchups against these characters. The other half of the characters cannot throw fireballs at him, and he has a lot of 7-3 matchups against them. If E. Honda is fighting himself, it’s a 5-5 matchup. Now, is this fair? If half the cast is heavily advantaged against him, and he’s heavily advantaged against the other half, then it all averages out and he’s basically even and fair, right?

 No, he’s not. When he’s fighting a character without a fireball (advantaged for Honda), it’s not magically fair just because there are other characters advantaged against Honda. That doesn’t change the game being played this instant.

A few years back, a friend of mine made a particular Magic: the Gathering deck (Magic for shorthand). It focused on spewing out large numbers of very powerful goblins, completely overwhelming the other player. This deck crushed the other decks our group played effortlessly, and was no doubt the best deck any of us had.

To hell with all of that, I said, I will play a deck he cannot beat. I played cards that destroyed every goblin in play, leaving my own creatures intact, I only played creatures that goblins literally could not hurt, and cards that would be able to stop him from doing anything at all, after I’d nullified any threat he posed. I played a lot of matches against the goblin deck, and the goblin deck never won. It never even got close. I played matches against other decks, too – the anti goblin deck never won, because everything it did focused on stopping one specific strategy. Don’t play that strategy? You’re welcome for the free win. My deck’s matchups were all 10-0 or 0-10; there wasn’t any point to playing, because no amount of player skill could bridge that gap.

At the end of the day, even though my deck beat the strongest deck in the group, it was still the weakest by far. It sacrificed so much efficacy to beat the strongest deck that it was completely worthless everywhere else. It wasn’t fun to play as or against, and it was really unfair. E. Honda’s matchups aren’t all or nothing – 7-3 matchups are definitely winnable, they’re just really tough. In an asymmetrical game, you’re never going to get a true 5-5 matchup, but as a designer, you should really strive for every matchup to be as close as possible.

I’ve got other related topics I could talk about, but I think those deserve their own article – covering them here would drift too much from the original idea. Until next time, may you enjoy fairness.

-Jacob